SUV's and all that

I would really like an SUV...... Sweaty Under Vest that is. All of this exercising without getting warm is starting to get me down. I did try out the mountain bike with slick road tyres on which in one sense was quite liberating, but it was sooooooo cold! Trying to keep the pulse under 120 BPM is really tricky when you have to climb 100m from the bottom of the valley to home (of course, going down is no problem but usually you rely on the uphill bits to get warm).

To be honest the mountain bike looks a bit silly with it's little tyres on.... a bit like one of those Chelsea Chariotts that you doing the school run. Only my mountain bike is dirty! So it is an SUV..... Significantly Uncool Velo ;-))

Since cycling of any type is so boring at the moment I've been doing a lot of walking and geocaching. Yesterday I managed to walk into Germany without realising which was a bit of a problem given that my passport was at home. Not to worry, nobody noticed and I slipped back into Switzerland at the next opportunity. All this walking around the place is starting to worry Fi because she thinks I might fall off a mountain or something while I'm looking at my GPS. I'm having to text in my location and condition at regular intervals..... lucky the mobile signal is so good around here.

It's only a week now before I start back at the office. The good news is that I'm back for two days and then it's Fasnacht (Carnival) so we have a day off! Basel Fasnacht is a strange affair and seems to be loosely based around the ridicule of people from the Alsace (known as Waggi). All of the villages have effigies of Waggi sporting odd clothes and masks dotted around the place. Most disturbingly, in Zuzgen hey are hanging by their necks from lamp posts! The reason for this persicution of the Waggi is that they sold fruit in Basel back in the middle ages. So much for competition! These days you will see the Waggi throwing oranges out of the floats in the Fasnacht parades.

So with a week to go, I still haven't decided on my future. One certainty is that I will not be working late nights and weekends in the future. My laptop and work mobile will be switched off and my colleagues will have to live with that... empowerment I think it is called! There are a few things happening in the company that I think are a slap in the face to the employees who have been giving the company a lot of extra working time for free. Don't get me wrong, I'm going to work as hard as normal when I go back, I'm just not going to let work be my reason d'etre.

I'll be honest and say that I'm really quite enjoying myself at the moment. I'm not sure that I could continue this way though. It will be interesting to see what is on the table when I get back to the office before making any final decisions. Mind you, from what I've been hearing from colleagues everything is under control.... so that beggs the question: Do they need me back at all?